LAX92FA212 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From P52 to P52
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX92FA212
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 150
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 150
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N191P
- Operator
- Manion, Bernard · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From P52To P52
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel contamination; Stall
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Copilot/second pilot › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Fluid, fuel › Contamination
- Unknown › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Unknown › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT FLIGHT, THE NON-CERTIFICATED STUDENT PILOT FUELED THE AIRPLANE FROM A 5-GALLON CONTAINER WITH AUTOMOTIVE FUEL. HE THEN INVITED A CERTIFICATED PILOT TO ACCOMPANY HIM ON A LOCAL AREA FLIGHT. WITNESSES OBSERVED THE AIRPLANE DEPART AND APPEARED TO CLIMB SLOWLY AT A SLOW AIRSPEED. DURING A LEFT TURN AFTER DEPARTURE, OTHER WITNESS HEARD THE ENGINE RUNNING ROUGH, SPUTTERING, AND THEN QUIT RUNNING. THE AIRPLANE THEN BANKED TO THE RIGHT AND DESCENDED IN A NEAR VERTICAL ATTITUDE, STRIKING A CEDAR TREE AND MOBILE HOME. THE AIRPLANE WAS CONSUMED BY A POST CRASH FIRE. EXAMINATION OF THE LEFT FUEL TANK THAT WAS NOT DAMAGED BY FIRE, REVEALED THE PRESENCE OF OVER A QUART OF WATER. THE INTERIOR FILLER NECK AND FUEL CAP HAD EVIDENCE OF RUST.
Probable cause
A FAILURE OF THE STUDENT PILOT TO CONDUCT AN ADEQUATE PRE-FLIGHT INSPECTION TO REMOVE CONTAMINATED FUEL; A FAILURE TO MAINTAIN ADEQUATE AIRSPEED TO PREVENT AN INADVERTENT STALL. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WAS AN INADEQUATE ANNUAL INSPECTION OF THE FUEL SYSTEM TO DETECT A LEAKING FUEL CAP, AND INADEQUATE SUPERVISION OF THE FLIGHT BY THE PILOT-INCOMMAND.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX92FA212
- Event ID
- 20001211X14672
- Case number
- LAX92FA212
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1992-05-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7976197ced6238d03a0323e82fb2ff5f31bcd7adb359307215e8bb2397e68abd; retrieved 2026-09-21T01:11:34.502Z.